D.C. Current

Parsing the New Fedspeak

Parsing the murky language of the Fed, with the help of two English experts.

ASK ANY MEDIEVAL MARTYR: plain talk is a sure-fire way to land you in a vat of boiling oil. No modern man knows this better than Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. He was praised in February for assuring the markets with refreshing clarity, but then condemned in May for roiling those same markets by sharing his candid views of inflation. The problem was that they changed every day.

We believe that Chairman Bernanke has learned a hard lesson and will eschew intelligibility forever. Like a good penitent, he is striving...